Review: Avengers #394

Avengers #394, "Bad Blood," Cover Date January 1996
Plot by Bob Harras and Terry Kavanagh, Script by Ben Raab, Pencils by Mike Deodato, Inks by Tom Palmer

Review: Iron Man #324

Iron Man #324, "So Far to Fall," Cover Date January 1996
Written by Terry Kavanagh and Dan Abnett, Penciled by James Calafiore and Mark Bright, Inked by various, cover by Jim Cheung

Review: Silver Sable #21

Silver Sable #21, "Home of the Body Bag," Cover Date February 1994

Written by Gregory Wright, Penciled by Steven Butler, Inked by Pam Eklund

For those that only have dim memories of Silver Sable, she's the European mercenary that works primarily as a Spider-Man ally across various media. Her serious disposition and willingness to take money for her work put her at odds with Spider-Man, who frequently ends up being tempted by Sable's financial incentives but always ends up turning them down. Because it was the early 90's, Sable was given her own comic, completely separate from Spider-Man (although, not surprisingly, he guest-starred in the very first issue).

Review: War Machine #22

War Machine #22, "The Last Stand," Cover Date January 1996
Written by Dan Abnett, Penciled by Fred Haynes and Yancey Labat, Inked by Johnny Greene and Jimmy Palmiotti(?!)

Where we last the Avengers, Iron Man revealed himself as a pawn of Kang, and has killed Yellowjacket (the Guardian of the Galaxy), Marilla, Luna's nanny, and Amanda Chaney, the PR rep for Force Works. He also blasted Wasp in the face, but it remains to be seen if she'll recover.

Review: Force Works #19

Force Works #19, "Time Out of Mind," Cover Date January 1996
Written by Abnett & Lanning, Penciled by Heitor Oliveira, Inked by Rey Garcia

Last issue of the Crossing I covered, Tony was finally revealed as evil and fought the Avengers, thus clearing Hawkeye's name. Kang was also finally revealed as Mantis's mystery husband! Meanwhile, Force Works is in Vietnam, Tony Stark's crazy ex is somewhere in the arctic, and War Machine, U.S. Agent and Black Widow are on some military base in the southwest. Now that we're all caught up, let's get to the action!

Special Review: Warrior #1

Warrior #1, "Warrior," Cover Date May 1996
Written by Warrior, Penciled and Inked by Jim Callahan

We interrupt our regularly scheduled comic book reviews to review Warrior #1, in light of Warrior's surprising death this week. As a little background, Warrior had left WWF in November of 1992, and had since legally changed his name to "Warrior," and by 1995 was ready for a lawsuit against WWF for related trademarks and licenses (that he would eventually win). He took some time off from that in order to self-publish the "Warrior" comic, under the "Ultimate Creations" umbrella, at the tail end of the comic book bubble.

Character Spotlight: Bishop

Way back in August, I started up a feature I hoped to do regularly where I'd spotlight a character created in the 1990's. You can read my first entry over here: http://thepouchfiles.blogspot.com/2013/08/character-spotlight-cardiac.html I'm still taking a brief mental sabbatical before continuing to work through the Crossing, but I figured I'd do another of these.

Presenting BISHOP, the plot device that walks like a man!